Prior to the 1990s, businesses in the Hamilton central area were free to trade without controls over investment in parking.

This changed with the new 1991 City of Hamilton Town Plan – Section 4.0 Vehicles – parking, loading and access (page90)

And from the same Town Plan – Section 10.0 Central area commercial zones: Objective 5 (page 271)

This policy prohibited new investments in the city centre zone from trading without providing car parking spaces and promised to gift rate payer money to subsidize the doubling of this car parking spending (page 281)

Alternatively, the investor could gift the city council a payment in lieu of parking (page 92)

This is a step change in the cost of investing in the city centre, compared to 1990. The cost of land equalling 160m2 gross floor area (gfa) was about $80,000 in 1990 terms. The 1990s town plan increased the cost of new investment in Hamilton by 15% ($12,000) to $92,000.If we include the $12,000 subsidized parking the rate payer has to contribute to support central city businesses, the real increase is more like 30%, to $104,000.